Operator of massive facility in Mojave Desert says number of avian deaths exaggerated

Giant solar plant frying birds

MOJAVE DESERT  Just before Interstate 15 exits California for Nevada, drivers catch an astonishing sight: A five-mile swath of desert covered by mirrors and spiked with towers reflecting dazzling beams of light.

This place’s official name is as dry as a typical Mojave day: The Ivanpah Solar Project. Motorists’ descriptions are more vivid.

“Like something out of science fiction,” said Julie Billington, 54, a microbiologist from Berkeley.

“Like something out of a James Bond movie,” said Steve Kosnik Jr., 48, a salesman from Phoenix.

“Like the Eye of Mordor,” said David Lamfrom, 35, an environmentalist and “Lord of the Rings” fan in Barstow.

Sound sinister? It gets worse: federal investigators found that the plant’s radiant heat incinerates birds. They’ve been dubbed “streamers,” for the streams of smoke they emit while falling to the earth.

“That plant is a disaster,” said John Hiatt, conservation chair of the Red Rock Audubon Chapter in Las Vegas. “My understanding is the bird mortality rate is far higher than anyone anticipated.”

Three 459 foot tall power boiler towers glow bright from sunlight reflected from a large array of mirrors surrounding them at the Ivanpah Solar Project located in California's Mojave Desert on Thursday, August, 21, 2014.
— Hayne Palmour IV / UT San Diego

Ivanpah’s operator, Carlsbad’s NRG Solar, maintains that bird fatalities have been exaggerated. A company spokesman also noted that NRG is studying ways to limit avian casualties, including scaring away flocks by broadcasting the sounds of predators.

For better or worse, this ambitious display of futuristic technology is rewriting the future of renewable energy. The world’s largest concentrated solar power plant, Ivanpah went online in February and already produces nearly 30 percent of the nation’s solar thermal energy. In a single month, it captured enough sunlight to power 17,000 average American homes for an entire year.

NRG celebrates this as a victory for consumers and the environment, weaning California from dirty fossil fuels.

In a statement issued last week, NRG maintained that “companies like ours should be leading the race for a clean energy future to reduce the impact of climate change for future generations.”

But that upbeat comment came on the wings of a federal report on bird deaths at three solar energy plants in California. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigators found that birds were killed by “solar flux” — exposure to temperatures of up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit — at only one of the three locations: Ivanpah.

Even before this blow, though, Ivanpah had its critics. In what may seem a perverse twist, environmentalists, normally the first to advocate green energy sources, have been the plant’s staunchest foes.

“But this isn’t a question of whether we need renewable energy — we unquestionably do need it,” said Lamfrom, a National Parks Conservation Association official who monitors California’s deserts. “But we need to do this in a way where we gain the benefit and reduce the harm.

“Ivanpah is a case study of how not to do a renewable energy project.”

In the beginning, Ivanpah’s problems seemed small and very, very slow.

BrightSource, the plant’s original developer, began work in 2006. In late 2007, the company held a public briefing at the Primm Valley Golf Club, a 36-hole greenbelt adjacent to the site BrightSource would eventually develop.